When I bought my ticket for Korea it was nominally an independent monarchy under a Japanese "protectorate," but the day before I sailed from San Francisco, Japanese aggression took another step and the country was formally annexed as a part of the Japanese Empire. There is little doubt, I suppose, that the Japanese will give the Koreans better government than the old monarchy gave them, but one {68} cannot excuse all the methods by which Japan fastened her rule on the island. Yesterday morning I went out to the Old North Palace, a deserted and melancholy memorial of vanished power, stood on the throne where Korean kings once held audience, and saw the royal dwelling in which the Japanese and their aids killed the Queen in 1895, and also saw the place where they burned her body. The Japanese minister at that time was recalled and placed on trial for the offence, and, though he escaped conviction, the evidence of his guilt was undoubted. It has been estimated that in about eighteen months in 1907-'08, "12,916 Koreans, called 'insurgents' by the Japanese and patriots by their fellow countrymen, were killed by the Mikado's soldiers and gendarmes, only 160 of whom lost their lives." This looks more like butchery than war. Moreover, the Japanese themselves have to admit that there were inexcusable delays in paying for land seized from Koreans, and in view of all the circumstances it is questionable whether the Korean hatred or dislike of Japan will become very much less cordial than it is to-day.
Perhaps in no country in the world has missionary work been more successful than in Korea (there are probably 125,000 Protestants now, while there were only 777 thirteen years ago), and I have been interested to learn that there is absolutely no truth in the Japanese newspaper reports that immense numbers of native Christians are leaving the church since annexation. On the contrary, reports from all over the country are good, and Seoul itself is just now in the midst of a most thoroughgoing and successful Christian revival, with 1800 conversions reported during the first ten days. At a Methodist mission school I visited this morning I found that a hundred of the native pupils had been canvassing the town a part of three successive afternoons with the result that they had brought in the names of 697 Koreans expressing a desire to become Christians.
Here in Korea there is no waste of energy or money through {69} denominational divisions. Each denomination has its own sphere of activity, preventing duplication of effort, and my general observation has convinced me that the criticisms of foreign mission work sometimes heard in America are based on a radical misconception of conditions. Even the non-Christians, in the great majority of cases, speak in high praise of the splendid work of the missionaries. A typical expression is that found in the latest issue of the Shanghai National Review , now before me, which may be expected to speak impartially. Referring to an address by Doctor Morrison, the Peking correspondent of the London Times , it says:
"Doctor Morrison eulogized the work of the missionaries and we cannot conceive that anybody who really knows of their work at first hand, not as it is to be found in extreme cases, but as ordinarily carried on, should do otherwise than eulogize it."
Seoul, Korea.
{70}
VIII
MANCHURIA--FAIR AND FERTILE
"Uneasily sleeps Mukden to-night"--I remember yet how one of the dispatches began which brought so vividly to my mind the meaning of the great death-grapple here between the Japanese and Russian hosts in 1905.
[Footnote: "Uneasily sleeps Mukden to-night. In the main street lamps burn dimly. Along dark roads in heavy dust are marching columns. The cool night is full of the low rustle of movement. Near the station, in over-filled hospitals, are heard low groans. The wounded arrive in a never-ceasing stream of carts, and another stream of ambulances moves northward, for the place must be cleared for to-day's victims. The eternal pines whisper above the Tombs of Chinese Emperors. In the fields watch fires are burning stores and evacuated villages----" And the correspondent goes on to tell of the wearied forces gathering for further fighting with the coming of dawn--men footsore and weak for want of food and water and rest. For forty-eight hours the Japanese had not eaten.]